Did you know that the way you set up your environment will directly impact on your decision making? This is something we discuss in this weeks interview with Bart De Vries. We explore workplace set up, how to align values and passion to get what you want in life all the way through to ethical business practice and why your business may want to consider it.

Show Notes:

• Introducing Bart
• Barts barriers that led him to do what he does now
• The learnings from sport that carries over into other areas
• New age physiotherapy and Barts clinical evolution
• Change your diet to change your movement
• Culture building in cafe environments
• Benefits of global movement
• Addressing the person as an individual
• The importance of trust in treatment
• Optimisation of the athlete
• How your workplace set up can make you less intelligent!
• Aligning values and passions to create a better future
• More desk work = pain and inflammation
• What prompted the shift out pf physiotherapy?
• More desk work = pain and poor health
• Is a standing desk enough?
• Errectorcise!
• Limber – maximising movement
• Why aligning your business values with your personal values is key to wellness
• Ethical business and why its important
• Purpose and values
• Why your company wants to become more ethical
• How to go about becoming an ethical company
• 2025 = Gen Z = change is coming!
• Thinking beyond your own personal timeline
• The infinite game!
• Creating wellness at your workspace
• Desk hacks
• Barts message for the world

The post BMR 35: Optimising Your Environment With Bart De Vries appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

I am introducing my new monthly co-host Bart De Vries and we are introducing a short, fun new chat on BestMe Radio called ‘Nice Nuggets’ where we will be exploring one wellness subject and sharing nuggets of information based on the selected subject. We will draw on previous interviews, new audio bites from leaders in that field, current research and common sense! In an attempt to cut through the misconceptions, draw out what we actually know and explore how we may implement this in our daily lives. All in 20-30 minutes (what a challenge!).

On this note, we want your input! Please listen to find out about this new format, why and how we want your input as well as our thoughts on some big wellness subjects.

Please let us know what subjects you would like us to talk on through facebook, instagram or through the website. I will be doing weekly polls on Bestme Instagram story so please have your say!

In the next episode I will be interviewing Bart on ‘Creating a Healthy Workspace’ as well as exploring his fascinating life so you will get to know him a lot better. Bart has extensive experience as a high level athlete, a chef, a physiotherapist, entrepreneur and environmental activist. He really is a great guy, doing great things and I think you will enjoy his wisdom, wit and weirdness!

Please enjoy this short fun chat and keep stepping into your best self!

Carl

The post BMR 34: Special Announcement – Nice Nuggets! appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

What does it mean to be a healthy man in today’s world? In this episode with Ben Warren we discuss what a healthy man looks and feels like, what the common risks and diseases are as well as the reasons for their development. Perhaps more importantly, we explore how men can look beyond disease-free and really thrive as a man in today’s environment. We cover Bens top foods for men, what to avoid and we also discuss in detail what an ideal day would look like!

Show Notes:

• (re) Introducing Ben
• Why men’s health isn’t as talked about as women’s health
• Why men are like a Toyota Hilux
• What are the big hitters for men?
• What shows up for men in the testing?
• What is the ideal in blood testing vs ‘normal range’
• What is the first step for men to become healthy?
• What happens when men are stressed
• Changing your relationship with stress
• Sleep – the foundation
• HRV as a tool to measure stress
• Bens interesting Uber driver encounter!
• When is technology beneficial and when is it just too much?
• Men’s mental health
• A human being with unmet needs
• Nutrition and mental health
• Client case study
• When there is a cause for supplementation
• Common vitamin and mineral deficiencies
• Inflammation
• Where genes express themselves
• Where exercise comes into the fold
• Exercise and liver function
• Why we need to take belly fat seriously!
• Time-restricted eating and intermittant fasting benefits
• How time-restricted eating looks and works best
• Why you want to build muscle!
• Stretch the metabolism
• Antiaging pathways
• How a perfect day will look
• Benefits of hot/cold exposure
• Brown-fat cells and why you want to up-regulating them
• How to live in the modern world and manage the foundations
• Bens top man-foods!
• Sourcing quality foods
• The study that was ended early because the results were that powerful!
• Improving gene expression through nutrition
• Why road rage is a thing! Eat greens with meat!
• Bens top avoid list!
• Why we need to consider how and why we drink
• Conscious decision making
• Coffee – is it good?
• Steps to creating a healthier man
• Disease-free vs optimal health
• Parting words of wisdom

More From Ben

Stay posted on Bestmecommunity FB and Instagram for our Men’s Health WOF testing Kit!

The post BMR 33: The Thriving Man with Ben Warren appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

Can fear and nirvana co-exist? Yes! It can be an access point to bliss and enlightenment according to this weeks guest Akshay Nanavati. Akshay is a speaker, athlete, author, former US marine and founder of Fearvana. Akshay’s book comes with the highest recommendations – including one from the Dalai Lama himself.

In this interview, we talk through what Akshay has learned through his own personal suffering – through his youth, experience in the marines as well as being diagnosed with PTSD and survivors guilt that led to him contemplating taking his own life. Whereas now he actively seeks adversity and recommends others do too! Beyond discussions around Akshay’s incredible journey, we explore why it’s important to find your own worthy struggle and seek adversity in order to drive self-evolution.

Shownotes:

• Akshay’s upbringing
• Creation of Fearvana
• Lessons from prolonged light deprivation!
• Seeking adversity through stillness
• From suicidal thoughts to facilitating epic feats
• Why Akshay decided to run border to border of every country in the world!
• Experiencing oneness along the journey
• Lessons from service in marines
• Finding unity in struggle
• Experiencing survivors guilt
• The struggle post-war and the ‘normal’ world
• How Akshay got to the point of taking his own life
• We ALL experience pain and suffering
• Reframing progress – easier vs growth
• Post-traumatic growth – trauma an access point to growth
• Attaching yourself to labels
• Do we really have free will?
• The 2 darts of suffering
• Recognizing the space
• Event + awareness = outcome
• Fearvana definition
• Discovering your worthy struggle
• Challenging your relationship to adversity
• The questions you need to ask and answer in order to find your worthy struggle
• The greatest lessons are in the DOING!
• Why you must seek the struggle
• The world of instant gratification and how to combat this
• The journey being the destination
• Evolution through the struggle
• Stepping into the next evolution of yourself
• What to do if you haven’t found your worthy struggle
• Miracle growth for the brain
• Looking for references
• REFLECTION and why it’s key to success
• Deep gratification vs fizzy high
• Living life with purpose and consciousness
• Coming out of the dark space and what is the first step?
• What is happening does NOT define you
• Why Akshay wants people to struggle more
• Akshay’s one recommendation for everyone to help them step into a better version of themselves

For more on Akshay and his incredible work click here
Instagram
Fearvana book

For more on Carl:
Sign up for bonus material through the newsletter
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Presenter

The post BMR 32: Fearvana with Akshay Nanavati appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

This is a chat I have always wanted to have! One that explores how we may begin to bridge the gap between the best of our ancestors and where we are today in order to optimise human health and longevity. Professor Herman Pontzer (PhD Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke) researches how the human body evolved, and how our species’ deep past shapes our health and physiology today.

We explore how our ancestors would have lived and evolved as well as healthy modern hunter gatherer tribes in an attempt understand modern health and human energetics. His findings thus far are fascinating and challenges our ideas around modern energetics – lets say its not as simple as calories in vs calories out!

We talk on what may have been the critical factors that drove our evolution and where diet, movement, social factors and environment may have played their role.

Episode breakdown
• Introducing professor Pontzer
• Herman’s education evolution
• Energy and the meaning of life
• Important points in time that drove our evolution the most
• The human ape
• The fist 5 minion years
• 2-2.5 million years ago – lifestyle changes
• What drove intelligence, brain size and development?
• What we can rule out
• The social component
• When were we at our healthiest as a species?
• Modern hunter gatherer populations
• What can we learn from hunter gatherers?
• Herman’s field work living with hunter gatherer populations.
• Big findings and insights
• Hadza tribes incredible physical output!
• The BIG surprise that challenges modern day energetics!
• Inflammation – unnecessary calorie burning
• Hadza hormonal profile
• We need to re-think exercise and diet
• Movement patterns of hunter gatherer tribes
• What do hunter gatherer people eat?
• Why the Hadza may laugh at the Paleo Diet
• The real Paleo Diet
• What makes us so sick now?
• Move, eat, connect like a hunter gatherer
• Changing how they burn energy vs how much energy is burned
• What problem would Herman love to solve right now?
• Microbiome and what else needs further research
• Herman’s wisdom that he will impart on everyone!

More from professor Pontzer here including awards, publications and more.

The post BMR 31: Lessons From Human Evolution with Professor Herman Pontzer appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

It is common knowledge now that mindfulness practice can help us in many ways including decreasing stress, making better decisions, increasing brain output, increasing creativity, increasing working memory, creating better motor patterns and even decreasing pain. But how we become mindful and what may influence how we get to that mindful state can massively differ for everyone. In fact what can aid in one person becoming mindful can disrupt someone else!

In this chat with Dr Cam McDonald we talk about how we may personalise mindfulness and how we go about facilitating the ‘flow state’ experience. If you want to increase your performance mentally, emotionally and physically then this is one you don’t want to miss!

The post BMR 30: Personalised Mindfulness appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

Mal Winnie is a living representation of resilience. A catastrophic event left Mal dying under tonnes of concrete, his lung punctured, spine fractured in 5 places, leaving his body numb from the waist down and as he went through the death process and took his last breath a miracle occurred..

In this episode I talk with Leadership Coach and former Outdoor Adventure Guide Mal Winnie about resilience. We explore what tools he picked to from the outdoors and some traumatic events in his life including a near death experience.  We explore the 4 different types of resilience and how we may assess these in our own lives and what we can do to make ourselves a more resilient being.

Episode breakdown:

• Introducing Mal
• Mal’s near death experience
• Big learnings from near death
• Finding reasons why vs reasons why not
• Hardwired for negativity bias
• What made Mal more resilient
• Our relationship with failure
• Seeking out adversity
• Have we created too much safety
• Defining resilience
• What Mal learned from mountaineering – 3 steps forward 1 step back
• The 4 types of resilience
• 1. Physical Resilience
• 2. Mental Resilience
• 3. Emotional Resilience
• 4. Social Resilience
• 5. Spiritual Resilience
• The 2 most important days in your life
• Resilience emphasis and overlaps
• Finding voluntary challenge
• How we can learn through adversity and challenging moments
• The power of reflection
• “Why does this always happen to me?”
• The power of vulnerability
• Overlaps and carry over effects of certain resilience practices
• Resilience and distress in the workplace
• Resilience in high performance sport
• The difference between ‘good’ and ‘great’
• Creating resilient children
• The danger of staying within the comfort zone
• Fostering a good relationship with failure
• Post traumatic growth
• Overcoming the negativity bias
• Creating better internal dialogue with yourself
• Effective bullying outcome and process
• Learning to be optimistic
• Common traits of resilient people
• Protective factors
• Correlation between resilience and workplace success
• Correlation between resilience and longevity
• Applicable tools and techniques
• Self awareness
• How do you do stress?
• The bus that drives everything: Autonomic Nervous System
• The power of breathing
• Overriding negativity bias
• Helping performance in the workplace – catch them doing it right
• Gratitude
• The danger of self comparison
• The grass is always greener where you choose to water it
• Mal one piece of advice to help someone start the journey to a more resilient self

The post BMR 29: A Roadmap To Resilience with Mal Winnie appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

This is beyond doubt the most powerful interview I have done to date. Angela has experienced what many would consider the most tragic thing that could happen to a parent and that is losing her son Will at the age of 104 days old. As you can imagine it was a very sad situation and it was hard for Angela to find happiness at times. However Angela took action and having a background in physiology gained some tools and techniques that very few have attained or understood.

In this episode we discuss how Angela got through this time and we explore what tools and techniques she uses and recommends as well as the why behind the application. If you want to gain more happiness in your life then this is a must listen episode as there are many very usable tools and techniques that you can apply now.

Episode Breakdown:

• Getting to know Angela
• Evolution of Angela as a holistic wellness practitioner
• Angelas experience from a really unhappy place
• Where there is life, there is hope
• 104 days of happiness practice
• ‘The Will to Liv’
• Unique tools pulled from this dark place
• Mind tools
• Morning rituals – setting up the day
• Deep joy vs fizzy highs
• The happiness pursuit trap
• Habits of the happiest people
• #1 habit
• So many controllable factors to give us power over our happiness
• The enemies to happiness
• Perception is key
• Pulling yourself out of the downward spiral
• Practicing laughter
• Raising happy children
• The power of play
• The power of epigenetics (and hugs!)
• How to stimulate the happiness hormones
• Happiness in men vs women
• Why men need to talk more
• Angelas one thing that you can apply right now to make you a happier you.

More from Angela:
Website
Facebook
Stay tuned for her book – Will To Live

More from Carl
HealthFit Collective
BestMe

The post BMR 28: A Formula For Happiness – With Angela Jenkins appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

“Plant the bunion seed, put fertiliser on it and then blame your parents, no way!”
 – Paul Thompson (The Barefoot Podiatrist)

In this episode I chat with The Barefoot Podiatrist Paul Thompson on the importance of having functional feet. We talk about what the foot is, its primary roles, how we can assess our own feet and how we can go about attaining ideal foot function. We also have some really interesting discussions around bunions, shoes, orthotics and whole body movement.

As you can see from the quote above this is a really fun chat with lots of useful information! Paul talks us through exercises in which we can do to both assess and address foot function and dysfunction.

Episode breakdown:

• Paul’s story – how he became the barefoot podiatrist
• Paul’s foot evolution
• Re – training your body
• What is the role of the human foot
• Why your feet are important
• What does good foot function look like?
• Why shoes are like blindfolds for our feet
• Why and how going barefoot will make you happier and less inflamed
• Improve your feet, improve your posture
• Why a heel raise activates our stress response!
• Recognising a dysfunctional foot in yourself
• Testing your feet – practical test that you can do now!
• Looking at everything else outside of the foot!
• Bunion discussion! Its not a growth, its not genes its a symptom.
• Listener questions
• A discussion around orthotics
• The shoe hierarchy – from best to worst
• Graded introduction into barefoot exercise
• Exercises!!
• What to expect on the barefoot journey
• What one thing can YOU do now what would that be?

More from Paul
Facebook
Book a Skype session with Paul!

More from Carl:
BestMe – www.bestme.co.nz
HealthFit Collective – www.healthfitcollective.co.nz

The post BMR 27: Upgrade Your Feet, Upgrade Yourself! With The BareFoot Podiatrist Paul Thompson appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

In part 2 of the interview with Paul Chek we dive deep into spiritual wellness. Paul not only a holistic wellness practitioner but is also shamanic healer with huge experience in many forms of spiritual practice including over 400 shamanic plant medicine experiences. We build on the last interview and dive deep into the exploration of self, god, spirit, consciousness, ego, religion and much More! He describes the 4 common denominators of spiritual wellbeing. Then he gives us some practical applicable tips at the end of the episode with many tools and techniques as well as the one question we should all ask ourselves. So get ready to challenge yourself and evolve your spiritual wellbeing.

Episode Breakdown:

• Defining consciousness
• 400 shamanic experiences and many forms of spiritual practice
• God = unconditional love = 0 = empty and full
• Religion + Science
• Exploring infinity and the absolute
• Conscious – ness and conscious – of
• Can AI replace consciousness
• CONSCIOUSNESS = GOD
• Sensory system, vibration and conscious – of
• Defining the Ego 
• How long it takes to develop the ego
• Most critical programming stages
• The greatest source of fear
• The importance of love
• The chief function of the ego
• Love as consciousness becoming aware of itself
• Donald Trump is a part of all of us
• Over encapsulated ego = separation + isolation and depression
• Over inflated ego = Over-esteemed self + impression of success and crisis of self
• Spirituality vs religion 
• Corporate religion – programming for profit
• Cutting through the dogma
• Ego inhalation – ‘soul loss’
• Becoming an individuated whole person
• Sprit gym – meeting emotional and mental resistance
• Going beyond the book
• Mystic branches of religions
• Real spirituality
• Defining spirituality 
• Defining enlightenment 
• Defining spiritual wellbeing 
• Stress, pain and judgment manifestation
• Grace and faith
• What we can do now to develop our spiritual wellbeing
• Sick body = sick mind
• What do you love enough to grow and heal for?
• 4 common denominators of spiritual wellbeing
• 1: Turn a negative into a positive
• 2: Create beyond the laws of physics
• 3: Create equanimity and harmony wherever they go
• 4: Draw their power from unconditional love
• Tools to help grow
• Behind every angry person is someone that needs more love
• Love is a boomerang
• The one question that will help you grow spiritually
• Spirit gym and earth school
• Quickfire questions:
• One person that inspires Paul
• One book thats been most influential on Paul’s development
• What is Paul working on currently to enhance spiritual development
• Pauls message to people to help them step into their best self now

References:

These links are all in reference to the material referenced in the interview

• Christian Mystics – Meister Eckhart, Matthew fox
• Itzhak Bentov – Stalking the wild pendulum Kabbalah –
• Kabbalah– Judaism mystic
• Gnosticism
• Ken Wilber – levels and lines
• Edward Edinger MD – consciousness

Links:
How to eat move and be healthy – my number 1 wellness book
Pauls Blog
Chek Institute (World class courses Id recommend everyone invest in)
Paul’s Youtube with loads of free info
Pauls awesome podcast – Living 4D

More from Carl
Bestme – Subscribe to the email database for free content and more in depth information on podcasts and events.
Healthfit collective – Where I practice as a wellness coach

The post BMR 26: Spiritual Wellbeing with Paul Chek Pt.2 appeared first on The Wellness Couch.